Fred James

Some AV programs are more difficult to remove than others - Norton is a really bad example.

One of the best free AVs around now is the new one from Microsoft - Microsoft Security Essentials. Its dead easy to use and is not in the least obtrusive like some of them. It seems to have no effect on performance.

It has been getting some good reviews in the computer press.

http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/

Ka Ora!

It's sounds more like your Machine could do with a complete Windows re install and a slightly better AV be installed on it, IMHO Nod32 from Eset is one of the better AV program and is not as system resource hungry as others. It gets over looked by Joe public but it is used a lot in enterprise environments.

But one of the great advantages of a Mac is backing up and ease of migration to new machines in the advent of failure. If you regularly back up with Superduper to an external or internal drive should you system fail you can take that backed up drive to any other Mac and boot from it. You can boot a Mac Book Pro with the Hard drive of a Mac Pro or a Air so whilst a machine is being repaired you can loan one and it's business as normal. Osx can boot up from an external usb or firewire drive as well.

Like Windows, OSX has it's faults it's a personal choice thing they cost more but I say if you can afford one get one you wont regret it.

HBG

I use a paid for Norton’s anti virus programme on my desktop because occasionally I allow some foolish people to use it (I’m closely related to them). I’ve tried all the free programmes but found Norton the most efficient when some close relative goes into a chat programme and clicks on every link that comes up. It’s either that or a complete re-install to sort out the horrible mess left behind.

Norton does slow the computer down a little, but not as much as it used to.

My wife swears that ebay and paypal are safe, yet after one of her long sessions, the cursor often starts to flicker alarmingly and I have to get rid off trojans, key loggers and all sorts of silly stuff, and my home page loads in Russian.

Talking of which, Kapersky is another excellent anti-virus programme, in typical Russian fashion they write them and then show you how to get rid of them, for a fee, of course.

Mitzyboy

Norton is terrible imho, and is equally terrible to remove .... I've been though it. Someone I know (IT person) likened it to AOL ...... it takes over your computer and you don't realise it.

I moved to the free AVG at one point and now use ZoneAlarm Security Suite which does me just fine

bricwood

I would personally prefer a virus to norton, I dont know any IT people that like it, the problem with buying a pc or laptop is they are badly configured and full of rubbish trial software, if you want a computer to fly reformat when you get it home, windows 7 and vista will find all the drivers, when I moved to europe I bought a cheap back up pc as a spare an e pc from pcworld it was like a snail I reformated and did a fresh install it works fine and all for £99 , my laptop was 350 from comet reformat install windows 7 and its fantastic, unless you use a pc to design things and only use email and browse best bet is install linux its very similar to windows but no viruses , if you google wubi it will install ubuntu inside windows for free and you can un install if you dont like it, if you are using xp its time you bought a new one

Ka Ora!

Ebay and Paypal are safe pretty much, I would avoid pages that are linked to off the site by sellers. Following links blindly can be the down fall of the most hardened internet user.

fionamw

?? Must be barking!!! I wouldn't want one again. Mind you, you can probably deal with it yourself. Makes a difference!
I might be able to reformat but it would take a lot of considering, googling, ringing IT-savvy friends, etc. Some of us are still almost scared of computers, even though we may be able to use the front end quite efficiently.
I do quite a lot of photo-editing, quite a lot of word processing (by which I also mean cutting & pasting from websites, reformatting fonts, pix, general DTP type stuff) and LOTS of browsing and saving bits off the web etc.
I know..... they were my first words in the thread!

(nb I've had a mac, didn't get on with it. don't know if that says more about me than the mac but .... came free from OH's design company, where they wouldn't use anything else. Ho hum)

HBG

I still have a 12-year old English laptop which came with Windows 98 and a spec that makes people laugh nowadays. I did install XP on it along with Office 2003 and practically nothing else which I use as a word processor only.

Just as an experiment I connected it to the net a few months ago and I was online in less than a minute. Just in case, not having any protection whatsoever, I disconnected immediately. Funnily enough, it also works with a USB flash drive and I don’t think they were even invented when I got the laptop.

I hide it when I’m not using it.

Neil29649

As I've said before you get what you pay for with Anti-virus Software.
In nearly every case of clearing an infection from a PC / Laptop that has av software installed it has AVG.
I only use Mcafee as I know in my 24 years of I.T Experience it works!
We had it installed on over 1200 PC's / laptops and 90 Servers in the UK and never had a major problem.
Eset Nod32 and Kaspersky are also worthy of a mention.
Norton is a pain and as mentioned can really slow your machine down and leave you frustrated as it won't let you do anything without "taking over".

These are my personal thoughts based on my experience of many av products in both a corporate and home environment.

If anyone needs any help let me know.